August 2nd, 2017 is burned into my memory.
I was wrapping up a meeting in a downtown Minneapolis office when I glanced at my phone and saw four missed calls from my brother.
That’s when my wife called.
“Richard,” she said quietly, “there’s been a massive explosion at your mom’s school. No one can find her.”
I didn’t respond at first.
I couldn’t.
As my boss and I stood up, we looked out the window and saw smoke rising in the distance.
Eight miles away.
In the direction of my mom’s school.
At that moment, no one knew what had happened.
Accident or attack.
Gas explosion or something worse.
All I knew was that my mother might not be alive.
I drove toward the hospital in a blur.
She was alive, but badly injured.
Bloodied.
Shaken.
Lucky.
Two people I knew well didn’t make it.
If my mom had left her office fifteen seconds earlier, she wouldn’t have either.
Later that night, after she was discharged, she insisted on going back to the school.
Not because she was ready, but because she felt responsible.
As we pulled into the parking lot, I was overwhelmed by what I saw.
Firefighters.
Police officers.
ER doctors.
Counselors.
Emergency crews everywhere.
They moved calmly.
Purposefully.
They weren’t scrambling.
They were ready.
That night changed how I think about preparation.
Those men and women didn’t become capable in the moment of crisis.
They were capable before it ever happened.
Preparation isn’t dramatic.
It’s quiet.
Often invisible.
Until the moment it matters most.
When I think about students now, I think about that day.
Most kids will never face a literal explosion.
But they will face moments that feel just as disorienting.
Realizing halfway through college that they picked the wrong major.
Graduating without a clear next step.
Landing a job that drains them instead of growing them.
Parents feel it too.
The anxiety.
The helplessness.
The question no one says out loud:
“Did we prepare them enough?”
Here’s the belief that quietly creates so much stress:
If we get them into the right college, everything else will work itself out.
I believed that once.
I even built my career around it.
As a high school counselor, I helped students get into great schools.
Then they came back.
Still unsure.
Still anxious.
Still searching.
Later, as a corporate recruiting leader, I saw the other side…who got hired, who didn’t, and why.
It wasn’t intelligence.
It wasn’t pedigree.
It was preparedness.
Think of your child’s future like a compass.
College is not the destination.
It’s one of the tools.
Without a direction, even the best tools don’t help much.
Especially now, when AI and automation are changing the landscape faster than families can process.
What looks like a lack of motivation is often a lack of clarity.
What feels like drifting is often a student who was never given a real map.
A few things I want every parent to hear:
Your concern is valid
Your child isn’t behind
Direction comes from understanding strengths, not forcing decisions
Preparation reduces anxiety long before it produces outcomes
Progress matters more than certainty
That night at the hospital taught me something simple.
You don’t rise to the occasion.
You fall back on your preparation.
Helping students become prepared, not perfect, is the work that matters most.
And it’s work we can do calmly, thoughtfully, and one step at a time.